Poem | Nabanita Kanungo

Photo : LeeLa

AGE II

When you left saying,
“If only you were forty…”

It’s 2017;
another five years
for this body
to reach there,
that fortieth league
of an ageless
chasm of words
between us.

If only you were forty,
you said.

But then,
distance would still be
an interminable lie;
numbers defining
the same grief;
ravenous mouths
returning to swallow
a tenderness
drooling
in long slithers
of hunger.

It’s 2017.
I’m 35,
vapid with words,
that do not erase me;
still unquiet with
what I remember
of your faces
peeling off each day,
their brilliant lies,
their carved moods,
their wooden smiles
and hollow eyes;
perfectly fitting
reality’s empty,
faceless
game.

I’m 35, still;
unqualified
for the tart wisdom
of that confession
you made:
It was a mistake.
Two and a half years.
Poetry too is a slight
of silence.
You were fifty three/four,
then?
You still squirmed
at the word
‘fornication’.
You were pure,
born the day
before;
given to
mistakes.
Who knows?
Maybe you
woke up one day
and didn’t like
my teeth
anymore.

If only you were forty,
or a bit above,
you said,
measuring me
with a steel-tape
in your voice.

Perhaps at 40,
one stops picking
lice from truth’s
dangerous tail
and love and stupidity
stand balanced
neatly in an
equation.

40 right-clicks
the body’s
dictionary to
auto-correct
‘love’ to ‘desire’;
‘desire’ to ‘sex’
‘sex’ to ‘fuck’,
'fuck ' to 'masturbate';
40 prefers things
easy,
simple,
straight.

At 40 one doesn’t
expect more
than one’s
share of sadness;
doesn’t expect
those nothings,
another earth,
a silly wish
on silly Valentine's day,
time,
attention,
talk,
conversation,
foreplay;
40
doesn’t
expect.

At 40,
poems are stripped
to their prosaic bone,
it’s bitter marrow,
sucked clean.

40 must mean
a stone’s math
settled in the
stomach’s pit;
a finesse words
cannot have
otherwise;
a knowledge
of practiced
whores,
their lip-biting
exit by the
back-door;
a craft
of death
one hones
with grace,
without fuss.

It’s 2017.
I’m 35.
I still wonder
if you write those
awesome love poems
for the young
and old;
It’s absurd how
you have the words
always—
words that buoy
your time on
a fancy new boat,
a body you don’t wish
was forty years old,
because it is
forty years old,
perhaps a bit
above,
perhaps a bit
below.
Who cares?
It’s not a mistake.
You must be
fifty eight/nine,
now?
long past
this mistake
of my then
33-year-old
body.

I'm still 35,
a forger of dreams
and poems;
still in envy of your
felicity of words,
those dark,
quick wings
on which you
flew away,
never turning
to see
how I’ve aged
to infinity.

Stars hence,
I would like
to meet you
at the edge
of dream,
strip myself
of years,
the thousand
layers
of dead skin,
memory,
words;

I would like
to see
if you recognise
this mistake,
this body,
closed,
sealed,
addressed
with
your
eloquent
apology;
and sent
nowhere.

I would like
to feel
you drink
of it again
for, it would have
turned into the
flawless grief
you wished it was
back then;
it would
have turned
forty,
a bit above,
maybe.

If only you were forty,
you said,
when you could have
done so much
better;
you could have merely
said,
The game
is up.
It’s over.